"
Thus he turned their attention a while from the business in hand,
changing their thoughts from the stout neck of the prisoner to
their own throats, wondering were they dry; and you do not wonder
long about this in the south without finding that what you feared
is true. And then he let them see the two great bottles, all full
of wine, for the invention of the false bottom that gives to our
champagne-bottles the place they rightly hold among famous
deceptions had not as yet been discovered.
"It is true," said la Garda. And Rodriguez made Morano put one of
the bottles away in a piece of a sack that he carried: and when la
Garda saw one of the two bottles disappear it somehow decided them
to have the other, though how this came to be so there is no
saying; and thus the hanging was postponed again.
Now the drink was a yellow wine, sweet and heavy and stronger than
our port; only our whisky could out-triumph it, but there in the
warm south it answered its purpose. Rodriguez beckoned Morano up
and offered the bottle to one of la Garda; but scarcely had he put
it to his lips when Rodriguez bade him stop, saying that he had
had his share. And he did the same with the next man.
Now there be few things indeed which la Garda resent more than
meagre hospitality in the matter of drink, and with all their wits
striving to cope with this vicious defect in Rodriguez, as they
rightly or wrongly regarded it, how should they have any to spare
for obvious precautions? As the third man drank, Rodriguez turned
to speak to Morano; and the representative of the law took such
advantage of an opportunity that he feared to be fleeting, that
when Rodriguez turned round again the bottle was just half empty.
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